PEFA SUCCESS STORY
More than 50 staff from several Danang government departments in Vietnam attended an introductory workshop on PEFA 2016 on 29 February 2016. At the end of a day of information and discussion, Mr. Sang Thanh Le, Director of Danang Department of Finance, declared that the City was ready to take the 10 steps for planning, implementing and using PEFA. Danang will perform a facilitated self-assessment, following the successful approach used by the national Vietnam government in undertaking their PEFA assessment, published in July 2013.
Danang is the first subnational government assessment to use the PEFA 2016 framework since its public release on February 1, 2016.
Mr. Le stated that he had been working in finance areas for more than 30 years but had not been exposed to any similar exercise before, and therefore he was very much looking forward to this exciting journey with development partners. He said that he expected the exercise to be helpful for them to know where their current practices stand and how they could improve them in the coming years.
During the first week of March the city held detailed workshops on individual indicators and dimensions to ensure that they had a clear understanding of what needed to be measured, the information required and the scope of the assessment. At the end of the week they prepared a draft terms of reference which was shared with peer reviewers, including the PEFA Secretariat before embarking on the data collection phase.
“PEFA has been a valuable tool for Vietnam to help improve understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of PFM in the country. The self-assessment process was particularly important in building knowledge and ownership of the report”, said Ms Quyen Hoang Vu, the World Bank’s Senior Economist and manager of the Technical Assistance program for Danang. “It provided the foundation for government and development partners to work out a strategy for reform which is now being implemented with support from the Swiss and Canadian governments and the World Bank.”
